FORSYTH - The Hickory Point Fire Protection District's Fill-The-Boot campaign raised a big fat goose egg for the Muscular Dystrophy Association a year ago.

But the annual fundraiser is back on track this year, with firefighters set to return to their old stomping grounds this weekend at the intersection of Barnett Avenue and U.S. 51.

They will be collecting donations from the intersection's three traffic islands from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday after the Forsyth Village Board, citing the law and expressing safety concerns, denied them permission to do so in 2007.

Because state law prohibits soliciting on state highways unless there is a provision in a municipal code allowing it, village officials developed an ordinance restricting who can collect donations along U.S. 51 and how they can be collected, and passed it Monday.

"We didn't want to open ourselves up to every Tom, Dick and Harry who wanted to put a can out," Mayor Harold "Hap" Gilbert said.

Firefighters asked people interested in contributing to the campaign in their name to mail them donations but had no takers, said Fire Chief Dennis Downey.

"We're glad to be back," Downey said. "We went through the village board and drew up a list of what we would do to be safe."

Those steps include staying on the traffic medians and approaching cars stopped at the stoplight only when motorists indicate they want to give some money. "We're not going from car to car soliciting as much as we are accepting donations," Downey said.

The Long Creek Fire Protection District, by contrast, prefers to stage its Fill-The-Boot campaign from Wal-Mart's parking lot back from Illinois 121, near the store's gardening center at Airport Plaza and East Maryland Street and near Culver's on Aldi Drive, and will do so again this year from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Aug. 30.

"It's safer and easier to connect with people away from the main road," Fire Chief Lowell Mulvany said.

Decatur Firefighters Local 505 struck gold when they shifted their effort last year to the intersection of Mound Road and U.S. Business 51, in consultation with the police department, and plan to return 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Sept. 6.

"We raised $5,000, which was more money than the three previous years combined," said Fill-The-Boot coordinator Micah Wakeman. "We stand on the concrete medians, and most people stopped at the light are eager to give. It's well worth being there."

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